the end of the internet is finally here..

THIS is it. end of the internet, that is.

High Hopes

Sorry my dear blog, I couldn't pay much attention to you in the past few days. Manjit reminded me that I was disregarding my blog by not posting at a good frequency. He has been instrumental in making me spawn this one in the first place!

Reasons I hate to give, and there weren't any. But I have spawned 2 more blogs, and that makes me happy.

The first of those two is in a joint venture with Atul, my school mate, to re-live the golden memories of my school days. We are trying to get as many friends as possible to contribute, and orkut has helped a lot in tracking down many of them. These public communities do help I must say!

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river

Forever and ever
--
Pink Floyd, High Hopes [The Division Bell, 1994]


As for the second new blog (third overall), I'll announce it once it is ready for publishing. It's under construction. All details about it, later. It's going to be one of my most valued possessions!

Giving back to the community..

This train of thought has been running in my head for quite a few days now. Thought of keying it in. It is about giving back to the community what one takes from it.

Let me start with giving the abstract some concrete shape. I am speaking about information here. Factual information derived from measurement or research, to be specific. Being a software engineer, I tend to hunt for almost all factual information I need, on the Internet. Not that I believe that all one finds on the Internet is authentic, but to a large amount, it serves the purpose.

I can say this about most of the software engineers I see around me (not only in my company, but many I know in other companies too). To an extent including myself as well. We search for information, feel mighty pleased when we are able to track down what we are looking for, and swear if we are not able to get the desired information. Let us discuss on poor searching skills at some other time. Another post would be devoted to that cause.

Now the crux of the discussion. Till its limited to searching information, well and good. It's like availing of oxygen. Done obviously, without realising. How many of us are active on public news groups or mailing lists to read what others might be searching for? How many of us try and post answers or give useful leads for queries that we can solve? How many of us end up cracking a hard problem and bother to post their finding on some forum to keep the solution available for others? Ask the above questions to yourself.

Factual information could consist of technical information, travel routes, workarounds for blockers, photographs/images, the list goes on.. All that you need to search at any point in time classifies under factual information.

Let's play our part in keeping the infosystem (information ecosystem) alive. Enough relying on others. And stop cribbing about why information about things in India is not so well represented on the web. You have a role to play in the failure too.

naram garam gana..

Once Makhaya Ntini (the South African medium pace bowler) and I were going for dinner in the beautiful city of Johannesburg in South Africa.

People obviously recognized Ntini, and were curious about who I was. Someone asked me "Who are you and where are you two going?"

I replied in one sentence. "i & ntini kida khane". Part 2 of the question obviously got answered. Part 1 - Thoughts jumbled?

The title of this post might probably be helpful if you are still going "huh?". Hehe.

Suprafantabulously megamagical..

It will take ages for such a match to happen again. We might not even witness one. On second thoughts, that's not the point at all.

What ODI cricket has seen today, was bowlers from both sides - Australia and South Africa - literally get raped. Australia amasses 434/4, surpassing the previous highest set by Sri Lanka (398). Sri Lanka had scored that against a measly Kenyan side.

Statisticians would be all scratching their heads and maybe they ought to work on probabilities of when would there be a match again where 87 boundaries and 26 sixes would be hit in a single match. And filling the newspapers and websites with umpteen broken records.

And when 872 runs are scored on a single day.. technically speaking, it does not matter who wins. But South Africa made that statement also look meaningless!! Someone beats you to what can be called as death, although not in the literal sense. Then you are given a chance to try your level best. And you, fight with such vigour that you kill the opponent! I've seen that happening in movies. Never in real life.

South Africa beat Australia by 1 wicket, 1 ball to spare, in the final of an all-important series. And this is called a comprehensive victory in my terminology - they did not let Australia run away with the record of maximum runs scored in an innings. The highest run scorer from Australia (Ponting, 164) was outplayed by a South African (Gibbs, 175). The worst bowler from South Africa ended up being better than the worst Australian. Lets see till when the highest ODI total record is broken next. And I do not want to end up being one of the statisticians anymore :)

Wat-a-match! The highlights of the match would be taking almost as much time as the entire match. So going through the repeat telecast is worth it. As many times as you want. Those who were lucky enough to watch it live, feel great to have lived in this era..

The winning team (South Africa) who carved out the impossible:

symbolic logic

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If you are reading this paragraph, welcome. I had too much of new policies, new handbooks, new services, new decisions, new leaders and yellow colour coming my way since over a year now. This has resulted in development of some symbolic logic. Here is what symbolic logic means:

symbolic logic, n:
Any logical system that abstracts the form of statements away from their content in order to establish abstract criteria of consistency and validity.

Nike's symbolic logic definitions:

SYMCemetery: place where software engineers get buried (especially looking at the ticker)
SYMchronous object: anything yellow in colour
SYMple: apparently easy things to finish at symantek
SYMpathy: yet another healing technique
SYMpathetic: pathetic (or unbearable) things at symantek e.g. policies
SYMphony: a cheater at symantek
SYMptom: sign of a symantek employee's visibility [will to stay at symantek] dipping
SYMran: any girl working for symantek who had to run on the railway station to catch a train (does DDLJ remind you of something?)
SYMbol: a yellow ball
SYMbiosis: guidelines at symantek about teamwork
SYMpathetic SYMonds: a person feeling pathetic about working on a Monday for a company named symantek


you are most welcome to suggest more SYMple definitions..

The Buddha

The Buddha taught that life was dissatisfactory because of craving. Note that I've used the term "The Buddha" here. The historical Buddha is one member of the spiritual lineage of Buddhas, which is thought to extend beyond history into the past and into the indefinite future.

Gautama Buddha was a spiritual teacher, born in what is now known as Nepal. A lot of Buddhism came my way because of my escapades with nature. The term Buddha is derived from the verbal root "budh", meaning "to awaken" or "to be enlightened", and "to comprehend".

Wikipedia defines Buddha as follows:
"A Buddha is a human being who has, through his or her own efforts and wisdom, awoken to the Truth (Dharma) behind appearance, having abandoned and overcome greed, hatred and delusion; attained liberation (moksa) from all suffering (a state of bliss and inner peace called Nibbana), and who possesses far reaching wisdom into the nature of sentient existence. In the sense of ‘one who knows’, the word Buddha is closely related to the word buddhi, a faculty of mind that may be translated as ‘intuitive discernment’. It is through the operation of this faculty that one is able to awaken and recover one’s own innate Buddhahood."

Siddhartha Gautama was not the first or the last Buddha.